Noticeboard

Need Urgent Dental Care?

If you need help with an urgent dental problem, call our helpline, available from 9am to 9:30pm everyday, including weekends and Bank Holidays.

0161 476 9651 (Local Rate)

Local dental providers offer NHS urgent dental clinics across Cheshire and Merseyside, with urgent appointments for patients who need urgent treatment, advice and support on dental queries or referral to other services.

The service is provided according to strict clinical criteri

a and when you call you'll be assessed by a member of our clinical team to make sure your problem come under either:

Trauma - this is usually caused by a blow to the face, a lost filling is not classed as a trauma.

Swelling of the face

Bleeding, uncontrolled, such as after an extraction

Pain that can't be controlled by pain relief medicines.

If you're given an appointment and your problem doesn't fit of the above, you'll still have to pay the NHS fee but may receive advice and not treatment.

Clinic times vary.and at busy times or when your local clinic's not available you may be offered an appointment at an alternative location.

Please not: this is an appointment only service - we do not operate a "drop in" service at any of our surgeries

Patient Group

The surgery has an active patient group which meets twice a year in June and December. We consult with our patient group about the way we deliver our services and over the years the group has contributed significantly to the introduction of a number of positive changes for the practice. We are also members of the National Association for Patient Participation (N.A.P.P). N.A.P.P. regularly publish e-bulletins and newsletters which you can access via their website www.napp.org.uk.

Everyone is welcome at our meetings which are held at the surgery on first Wednesdays of June and December, 6:30pm – 8.00pm.

Some of the more recent changes your patient group has been, or will be, involved in are:

We have recently implemented an easy to operate self check-in system which allows patients to book in for their appointment without needing to speak to a receptionist. This helped to alleviate queues at the reception desk and is proving popular with patients.

We have simplified our patient questionnaire which can be completed on-line. Paper copies of the questionnaire are also available in the waiting room. The Patient Questionnaire will be run throughout the year and the results will presented at the patient group meetings. Any comments, suggestions and ideas are discussed and may be used to drive service changes .

We now text patients who have given us their mobile numbers a confirmation of their appointment date and time when they book an appointment. Read more about our texting service here . We never reveal confidential information in a text message. We provide a practice email address at garswood.surgery@hsthpct.nhs.uk and we offer online patient bookable appointments. If you have any suggestions about other things you would like to be able to access using this facility please let us know and we will consider your request

A full copy of our 2014/15 Local Patient Participation Report can be viewed here.

A full copy of our 2013/14 Local Patient Participation Report can be viewed here.

If you would like to be involved in helping us to shape our services to meet the needs of our patients please tell the receptionist and we will ensure you receive an invitation to our next meeting. Alternatively, you can download(Word document - download and print PDF alternative) and complete a form to register your interest in joining the group. Please return your completed form to us by handing it in at reception, posting it via internal or external mail or e-mail it to us at garswood.surgery@hsthpct.nhs.uk.

Patient Surveys

We offer the opportunity for patients to access our patient survey all year round and we collate, analyse and graph the results twice per year in June and December. The results are presented to our patient group for their consideration and feedback.

The survey is available on our website for completion online. Paper copies and a dedicated posting box are also available at reception. Completed paper survey results and comments are manually added to the online survey by the Garswood staff before the survey results are downloaded and collated.

We wish to thank all who have taken the time and trouble to respond.

Your feedback is important to us and helps us to identify areas where patients may be experiencing problems. It also allows us to measure the magnitude of issues raised so that the patient group can consider issues in an informed manner and request us to consider changes to our internal systems to address these where this is possible. A recent example of this is where a number of patients consistently complained that they were experiencing difficulties getting through to the practice on the phone, in particular on Monday mornings. To address this we have taken on an extra member of staff to give us more telephone answering capacity. The last survey we conducted has far fewer negative comments in this regard. Another area is waiting room confidentiality issues. We have done much to address this and our survey results are demonstrating that this seems to be less of an issue.

NICE Public Involvement – Get Involved

The National Institute for Clinical Excellence (NICE) are committed to involving professionals, patients, carers, service users and the public in the development of their guidance.

Every piece of NICE guidance and every quality standard is developed by an independent committee of people which includes those who provide, commission and use health and social care services. These consultations allow individuals and organisations to contribute to the development of their recommendations.

You can help shape the recommendations they make by joining one of their committees. Click here to learn more about the NICE ‘Get Involved’ initiative – please hyperlink to http://www.nice.org.uk/Get-Involved